


How the West Was Won (Since I've Been Loving You Remix)

by EllieMurasaki



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Community: remix_goes_wild, Community: spn_bitesized, M/M, Remix
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-03
Updated: 2011-04-03
Packaged: 2017-10-17 13:32:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/177348
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EllieMurasaki/pseuds/EllieMurasaki
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean's brother is dead. Joe Harvelle is a hell of a hunting partner. Read keerawa's original story first.</p>
            </blockquote>





	How the West Was Won (Since I've Been Loving You Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [keerawa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/keerawa/gifts).
  * Inspired by [How the West Was Won](https://archiveofourown.org/works/146967) by [keerawa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/keerawa/pseuds/keerawa). 



Dean's brother is dead.

It's been years since Dean could wake up expecting Sammy to be curled up on the other side of the bed, or in the other bed, depending on whether Dad was there and whether Sammy had had a nightmare in Dad's absence. Years since Dean has helped Sammy study for a quiz, since Sammy has helped Dean research a case, since Dean has shown Sammy how to hold a pistol. All Dean has to remember him by is a few worn photographs and an amulet on a cord.

The bronze weighs down Dean's neck as surely as does the knowledge that it's Dean's fault his brother is dead.

 

John didn't have a choice. He couldn't take Sam with him and he couldn't stay, and he couldn't let Child Protective Services have Sam, because then who would keep Sam safe? Ellen Harvelle was the first person John thought to ask, being the only person John knew who both knew hunting and had had a child, and John was afraid she would turn him down. It would make sense for her to turn him down. Who was John to inflict the burden of another child on her? Especially when it was John's fault Bill was dead. But she said yes, convincing John for a couple months that there was indeed a God.

John just...let Dean believe Sam had died.

 

Joe Harvelle is...quite the guy. Smart, capable, likes Dean's music and Dean's car—he's the hunting partner Dean had always wished Sam could be.

Dean refuses to get attached. Like Joe said in the Roadhouse, hunters die easy, and Dean will never forget the first and last time he hunted with someone it was his responsibility to protect. Like it or not, Joe is his responsibility.

Dean's Joe's responsibility, too, Joe says. Which is...it's been a while since Dean hunted with Dad, and it's...it feels good to have someone at his back. Not to be on his own.

Dean misses Sam.

 

When Sam was at Stanford, Jo didn't miss him. Okay, sure, it was kinda hard sharing the work of running the Roadhouse among two sets of hands instead of three, but Jo never missed Sam. Now that Sam's gone—now that Sam's who knows where, doing who knows what, surviving who knows how—now Jo misses her brother.

Sam's Dean obsession makes so much more sense now.

Jo puts Led Zeppelin on the jukebox every so often, calls Sam every evening and makes sure to talk at least fifteen minutes, does his research for him, and hopes her brother comes home soon.

 

Sam wants so very badly to be able to tell Dean the truth. But he knows, he knows bone-deep, that the only reason Dean lets him stay is because Dean thinks of Joe Harvelle as an equal, not of Sam as the little brother he hates, or at the very least is happier without.

When Sam talks to Jo, he calls her Beth. When Sam talks to Mom and she asks if he's told Dean the truth yet, he deflects. When Sam talks to Dean, neither of them ever mentions a brother.

When Dean suggests they fuck, Sam says yes.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [How the West Was Won (the Going to California Remix)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/338060) by [EllieMurasaki](https://archiveofourown.org/users/EllieMurasaki/pseuds/EllieMurasaki)




End file.
